


Summons

by Marsalias



Series: Grandfather Clocks [14]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Gen, don't, don't summon the master of time in your garage, he'll sic his grandson on you, really - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:27:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23703067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marsalias/pseuds/Marsalias
Summary: Clockwork hates being summoned.  Danny (after)lives for chaos.
Series: Grandfather Clocks [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1706959
Comments: 18
Kudos: 550





	Summons

Danny froze, staring. Clockwork looked frazzled. Danny had seen the older ghost displaying a number of emotional states at this point, from ebullient to worried, but he had never seen frazzled. More to the point, Clockwork was rapidly, and randomly, flipping through his youngest handful of forms. Infant, teenager, preteen, toddler, infant again, twentysomething, Danny's age, elementary schooler...

He also kept disappearing, flickering in and out like a broken lightbulb. Ghosts could do that, of course. Danny did that rather frequently, actually. But Clockwork didn't. Not like this.

"Grandfather?" asked Danny, intensely worried.

Clockwork whirled. Had he not..? Had he not known Danny was there?

Clockwork rushed across the room, phasing (Hiw? They were in the Ghost Zone.) through his lab equipment. He grabbed Danny by the shoulders.

"I need your help," he said. Then he winked out of existence.

Danny gasped, eyes going wide. Clockwork hadn't just turned invisible, he was gone.

Before Danny could do anything about that rather disturbing revelation, Clockwork was back.

"Are you sick?" said Danny, blurting the first question that came to mind.

"What? No, I-" Gone. Then back again. "Yes. What was the ques-" Clockwork vanished. This time he was gone long enough that Danny started trying to make a list of everything that could possibly do this to Clockwork and how he could stop it.

Then he was back, but in a slightly different place. He looked furious.

"I'm being summoned," said Clockwork, speaking so quickly his words blurred together. "I thought I had destroyed all copies of that ritual but-" He was gone again. "- fix it myself, but they keep doing it, I can't even keep my thoughts straight. Can barely keep time straight-" Gone. "-corresponding with my personal timeline-" Nothing. "-trying to coerce me. My future self should be able to fix it, but seems to think that it's too funny." Clockwork paused, bracing himself. Then he frowned. "Did I get the timi-" He vanished.

Danny took a deep breath. He had a partial explanation, now. He didn't know what to do with it, but he had it. Clockwork would most likely be back in a few minutes, and of his future self thought it was funny, nothing too bad could happen.

He fidgeted. Clockwork had asked for his help, and he was surrounded by Clockwork's time-viewing equipment. But without more information, he didn't know what to do with it. He didn't know where, when, or what the root cause of this was. If he did something, he might make things worse.

The clocks of Long Now ticked on and on, layered on themselves. Cautiously, half-convinced that he would be scolded, he approached the piece of equipment Clockwork had been working on, a bizarre sculpture of colored lenses and curved mirrors.

Clockwork rematerialized between Danny and the item, causing Danny to squeak and jump in surprise.

"Not that," said Clockwork. "There's a loophole in the ritual. I can send my apprentice instead of going myself."

"So, you want me to-?"

"Yes. That should give me long enough to fix this."

"Um, sure," said Danny. Then, with more confidence, "Yes, of course." He was Clockwork's apprentice? He didn't know what that entailed, but it sounded nice.

"It should be safe," said Clockwork. His eyes narrowed. "But make them regret this."

Danny's mouth curled up into a wicked grin at the permission for mischief. "Okay!"

Clockwork pulled Danny into a hug, then Danny felt a strange tug on his core. Symbols and sensations briefly impressed themselves into Danny's mind. The world seemed to twist inside out and kaleidoscope, before turning into a reverse funnel and dropping Danny into normal space.

Mostly normal space. Danny could still feel a connection, a narrow tube, that lead back to Long Now. If he really tried, he could probably shove himself back into it. He wondered if that was what Clockwork had been doing, in which case his agitation made sense.

"Ha!" shouted a nearby voice triumphantly. "I got him this time!"

Danny blinked, and surveyed his surroundings. It looked like he was in someone's basement, or garage, but he couldn't tell which one, because the walls, and several suspiciously shelf-shaped items, had been covered with black fabric. The floor, however, was concrete, bare except for summoning paraphernalia, and it sloped down to a drain on one side of the room.

Danny scanned said summoning paraphernalia quickly. Chalk, salt, symbols, candles, several cheap broken watches, a suspicious pile of ash, a still flaming pile of herbs, and a large book. With the possible exceptions of the herbs and the book, none of these were real threats to Danny. He, Sam, and Tucker had tested a number of traditional ghost remedies on Danny. Salt rarely worked even on full ghosts.

Finally, Danny turned his attention to the summoners. There were two boys and two girls, and three of them looked like college students. More precisely, modern college students. This surprised Danny somewhat. He had more than half expected to be summoned to the far future or distant past. Or to be summoned by ghosts, or even aliens.

(Danny knew, and, more unusually, understood, that the Earth wasn't the only thing in the universe, although it was, from several valid perspectives, the center thereof.)

One of the boys was tall, blond, and just slightly gangly. He was clearly out of high school, but he had a distinctly unfinished look. He wasn't filled in yet. The other boy was quite different. He was round, probably overweight, and had skin the same color brown as the veneer on some of the desks at Casper High.

Of the girls, the older one, was situated between those two extremes in terms of overall appearance, with the addition of looking like the kind of person who liked to go jogging. The other girl looked like she was at least five years younger, and could have been the first boy's sister. In fact, she probably was.

They were all wearing 'robes.' It looked like they had all been cut out of sheets of black felt.

Danny felt the corners of his mouth twitch up. This was what had been giving Clockwork such a hard time? True, Danny knew better than most how something apparently innocuous could ruin your day, but he didn't have the willpower to resist giving Clockwork grief over this. Just a little.

The older girl frowned. "I don't know, Jonah. Doesn't he look a little different than before?"

Danny just tilted his head. It would be better, he decided, to just listen for the moment. To see what they knew, and how they acted. Then he would decide what to do. If they were just messing around out of boredom and just let him go (unlikely considering the state Clockwork had been in), he probably wouldn't do much of anything. If, on the other hand, they tried to bargain with him, or force him to do something... Well. Clockwork had told him to make them regret this.

"He looked like a lot of different things before," said the blond, defensively, clutching the book to his chest. "He's the Master of Time. He can change his age to whatever he wants. That's what the book says."

The younger girl glared at Danny, lower lip held between her teeth. "Yeah, but he does look more different."

The blond scowled. "Stop taking Janet's side."

"Well, when your side makes sense, maybe I will."

"'Makes sense?' Hello? I just summoned an eldritch abomination here. An old and nameless god!"

Okay, that was kind of hurtful. The eldritch abomination category might have fit Danny like a glove, but they didn't need to be mean about it. Also, both he and Clockwork had names.

"I think they have a point, actually," the other boy said, slowly. "Before he was more purple."

Jonah rolled his eyes. "So what? He's a shapeshifter. It doesn't matter. He's probably trying to trick us, or something. Maybe he thinks that Angela will let him out."

The younger girl turned to face him, bafflement clear on her face. "Why would I let him out?"

"Well, he looks like he's about your age, doesn't he?"

"You're joking. Do you think I've never seen a horror movie?"

"No, but you do read a lot of those paranormal romances."

"Hey," said the older girl (Janet?). "Can we focus here? We got a little carried away when we saw the thing was working, but what do we do with him now that we have him? He's kinda creeping me out, just floating there like that."

"Didn't you hear anything I said before we started?" asked Jonah, aghast.

"Yeah, but I didn't think it would work. I got a little distracted by it working."

"You just weren't paying attention the first time, were you?" accused Jonah.

"Not really, no."

"Well, Janet," said Jonah, crossing his arms and tipping his head back, "We're going to become rich and famous beyond our wildest dreams."

"Uh, Jonah?" said the other boy. "I don't want to be famous. Just rich."

"Whatever. You can do that instead, if you want." Jonah returned his attention to Danny. "Hey, you."

Danny made a show of ignoring him.

"Master of Time. Hey. I'm talking to you."

Danny still didn't acknowledge him, instead choosing to examine his gloves. How could he maximize chaos and his own amusement?

"I'm sorry, my brain just shorted out from all the stupid," said Janet, pinching the bridge of her nose. "You summoned this... entity, for a get-rich-quick scheme? When you, I don't know, could ask for the answers to the questions of the universe?"

"What good are those? Hey! What are the winning lottery numbers for tomorrow?"

There was a soft tug on his core, an urge to answer. Ah. He had been wondering how that would work. There wasn't a lot of power behind it, however, not like the summoning itself. Danny wouldn't have to put a lot of effort into resisting it. If he wanted to resist it. He didn't, at this point, and he didn't want them to do anything to make it stronger. Considering how distressed Clockwork had been, that was probably an option.

"I don't know," said Danny.

Silence.

"What do you mean, you don't know? You're supposed to know everything! You're the Master of Time!"

"I mean," said Danny, channeling Clockwork, "I don't know. I have better things to do than memorize lottery numbers. Do you have any idea how many lotteries there are? I'm not the Master of Useless Minutiae."

"Stocks, then. Which ones will be a good investment?"

"I don't think stocks will be a good investment."

Jonah pursed his lips. "Why?"

"Well, I don't see your society returning to the day of the pillory and stockade any time soon."

"Not those kinds of stocks!"

"Oh, did you mean socks? Socks are always a good investment, provided you have feet."

"I meant the stock market! The stock market."

"Okay."

"You understand?"

"Sure."

Jonah tapped his foot impatiently. "Well? What do you think?"

"I think that it never ceases to amaze me how often groups of people pick their dumbest member to be the leader."

The leader, Jonah, went very pale. Angela snickered slightly.

Danny turned to Angela. Time for chaos. "You seem reasonably intelligent, Angela. Why aren't you in charge?"

"Hey!" said Jonah. "Don't you talk to her!"

"Why not? She summoned me, too." His eyes drifted to Janet, very deliberately skimming over the second boy. "What about you, then, Janet? You had some questions."

"What about me?" complained the boy.

"Shut up for a sec, Matt, I'm thinking," said Janet. Oops. Maybe Danny had miscalculated.

Janet's gaze turned shrewd. "Who are you?" she asked.

He'd been expecting that, sooner or later. He'd been hoping for later, though. Oh, well. It wasn't as if he had a whole lot of experience with this kind of thing.

This time, Danny decided to fight the tug on his core. "You tell me. You're the ones who sumoned me. You should know."

Janet's eyes went narrower. "Who are you?" she repeated. The summoners were united again in curiosity.

Time to straight up lie. "I'm the Master of Time," he said, imperiously.

The candles flared and burned red.

"You're not the Master of Time?" asked Jonah incredulously. "Then who are you?"

So they had a set up to detect lies. Interesting. He wouldn't have thought they'd go through the trouble. "If you must know, I'm his apprentice. I answer his calls sometimes, run errands, you know."

Angela started laughing. "Oh my god, we got the eldritch abomination's gofer intern."

"But you still know stuff," said Janet.

"Depends on which stuff you want to know about."

Meanwhile, Jonah was flipping through the large book. Danny didn't like the look of that.

"How will the universe end?"

"Wow, there are so many possibilities for that one. Want me to start with-"

"Hah! Got it!" interrupted Jonah. "We can still get some good out of this!"

"Really?" asked Matt.

"Jonah, I'm trying to get some information here."

"Please. It isn't as if knowing how the universe will end will do you any good. I'd only done the candles, 'cause I thought we could get some future knowledge, but this guy is going to be useless for that, so..."

"I am right here," said Danny, disgruntled.

"We can force him to do whatever we want, if we have a big enough sacrifice... wait. Crap. Matt, how attached are you to your hamster?"

"Dude," said Danny, "that's gross. I don't want that."

"I'm not giving you Captain Rogers."

"Or we could make a deal, I guess." He looked up at Danny. "What do you want?"

"Depends. What do you want?" Danny wasn't sure how he felt about a 'deal.' Considering the general set up, it was sure to be coercive. A thought crossed his mind, and he smiled, slyly. "And is that what all of you want? I'm not sure you'll have enough for more than one deal."

This managed to get them bickering again, and Danny took the time to anticipate what they'd ask him to do and think up ways to ruin it. Rob a bank? Do their chores? Get revenge? Do their homework? Search for buried treasure? Overshadow people? Sneak them into movies? Something he actually couldn't do, like change their appearances?

The argument came to an end when Angela yanked the book out of Jonah's hands. She flipped it over and glared at it, as if she could intimidate answers out of it. Apparently, she could do that, because a minute later she looked up, turning her glare to Jonah.

"You're an idiot," she said. "Wait here." She shoved the book back at Jonah, and pushed past the black curtain, leaving only Danny and the three older summoners. Danny heard her going up a set of stairs, and the sound of a door opening and closing.

"What's she doing?" asked Matt.

"I don't know," said Jonah, throwing up his free hand.

Janet cleared her throat. "If you don't mind, I was asking some questions?"

"I do mind, actually," said Danny.

Janet scowled, then smiled. "Too bad. First off, what's the meaning of life?"

"How am I supposed to know that? You realize I'm a ghost, don't you?"

"A ghost?"

"Yeah."

"As in, a dead person, ghost?"

"That's the idea."

Janet and Matt turned to glare at Jonah. "You didn't say we were going to be summoning a ghost."

"I don't want to be a necromancer!"

"We weren't! We were supposed to get the Master of Time! Not this guy."

"Wait," said Janet. "Does that mean there's an afterlife?"

"Yeah, at lest one. I don't think you'll get in, though." Danny wasn't sure he liked being called 'this guy' in that tone of voice. As for Matt not wanting to be a necromancer, he should have thought of that before putting on black robes anddoing a summoning ritual in a basement.

"Why not?" asked Janet.

"Honestly, all of you are too boring. Seriously. You tried to summon my master for lottery numbers."

A door opened. "Got it!" shouted Angela. There was the sound of her coming down stairs, and then she pushed through the curtain. She was holding a large box.

"You've got what?"

"A sacrifice."

"You don't have a pet."

"I don't need one. The sacrifice doesn't have to be a living thing. It just has to have value. Preferably emotional, personal, or spiritual value. It's written down in there pretty clearly. You just didn't want to lose any of your stuff."

Jonah blushed as his friends glared at him. Angela, meanwhile, was setting up her things (stuffed animals, toys, old clothes, a picture, beads, a flash drive, a red 'second place' ribbon) around the salt circle. Danny wasn't liking the look of this. He wasn't liking the feel of this. With every trinket added, the pressure in his core increased, though it wasn't pulling him in any specific direction. Yet.

The 'hole' back to Long Now was looking more and more inviting.

"You guys want to add anything?" asked Angela.

Matt and Janet looked at each other. Janet shrugged, pulled a wallet from beneath her robes, and removed a wad of fortune cookie slips.

"You're really weird, sometimes, you know," said Jonah.

"You're the one with an extradimensional entity in his basement. Matt?"

"I don't carry anything like that with me," protested the boy.

"Cool. That means that Janet and I get to decide what he has to do." The younger girl grabbed the older by the arm, and pulled her into a corner.

"Hey," said Danny, to the remaining two summoners, "are you really going to let them do that? You summoned me too, after all. You should get some say."

"He's right!" declared Jonah, marching off. Matt followed quickly after.

Danny could, of course, still hear them, but he only partly paid attention. He was more focused on the feeling the items laid around the circle were giving him. They were pressuring him, yes, but they were also giving off a feeling of power. Somehow, he could tell that as soon as the four summoners made their demands, that power would be his, even though it would bind him more thoroughly. He wasn't sure how. He would have to ask Clockwork about the mechanics of all this once he got back.

This insight did, however, explain why some ghosts purposefully let themselves be summoned.

By the time the summoners finished arguing, the candles had almost burnt down. Danny knew exactly what they were going to ask for, and had at least an idea of how to twist it for his (and Clockwork's) amusement and retribution. And the education of these four idiots, who thought it would be fun to try and randomly summon one of the Ancient Masters, of course. Goodness, what if they had gotten Vortex? Or Undergrowth? No, they had to be given an intervention right now, before they became a cautionary tale for others.

"By the power of this sacrifice we bind you to three tasks," said Jonah, formally, his voice purposefully held deep.

"Uh huh," said Danny, now floating upside-down.

"First, you may not harm us, or cause us to be harmed."

"Whatever," said Danny. He wasn't intending to do that, anyway, and there was a loophole in that phrasing a mile wide.

"Second," intoned Jonah, "you must protect us from harm."

"Sure," said Danny. Again, there was a giant loophole there. They should have just tried to use the Three Laws of Robotics, even if the book said there wouldn't be enough power for something so sweeping. Danny would have really liked to look at that book, and see if really did have the Three Laws of Robotics mentioned in there (not impossible, because it was about how to summon a time-travrling ghost), or if it just said something about not doing an 'I wish for more wishes' type of thing.

"Third," here came the one that Danny could really mess with, "you must make it so that everyone we meet likes us."

"Okay, fine."

"By the power of this sacrifice we bind you to these tasks for a year and a day, unless we realease you."

The others chimed in with something that sounded Latin, but was straight gibberish, as far as Danny could tell. A wind picked up. The candles flared, then went out. The herbs and salt were blown away. The lines of chalk faded and smudged. The sacrifices disolved into mist (Danny knew, somehow, that they hadn't been destroyed. They were just somewhere else.). The influx of power was dizzying, intoxicating, not to mention the intensely distressing yank on his core. Danny pushed himself out of visibility, not wanting the summoners to see how he was affected, and sat on the floor, intentionally grounding himself.

Feeling steady, stable, Danny opened his eyes. He had missed a good chunk of the conversation, but that didn't matter.

"... going home," said Janet. "We can test if it works later. It's late and I'm tired."

Danny grinned, and began to split himself into duplicates. Oh, it had worked, all right. Just not in the way they wanted.

"Something is wrong," said Janet. She looked very frazzled, almost as badly as Clockwork had been, not at all like she had before. "I haven't been able to talk to anyone but you three morons for three days. Every time I try, they either get this weird look on their faces and run away, or I'm suddenly somewhere else."

"Me too," said Matt, "and every time I try to use the phone, my call gets dropped."

"My car keys are gone," said Jonah, "and so is every knife in the house."

"I think all the furniture has been moved a couple inches," said Angela, "and someone's been eating our food."

"Those aren't the only things missing," said Janet.

Danny and his seven duplicates giggled silently. Seeing their reactions to his mischief had been surprisingly amusing.

There was a serious aspect to this as well, however. Danny was sure that Clockwork would bring him back to his own time, no matter how long he spent here, but he didn't want to be here for a whole year. Hopefully, these four would do the right thing and release him.

"It's definitely him, isn't it?" said Matt.

"That's a safe bet," said Angela.

"I knew this was a bad idea," complained Jonah. He was rewarded with three glares. "What?"

Janet shook her head. "Can we tell him to knock it off, or edit our orders, or something?"

"Not that I found in the book," said Angela.

"You could always just release me, you know," said Danny, one of him returning to visibility. He was rewarded with several yelps. "Then I wouldn't have to do this."

"What do you mean," said Janet, recovering first, "that you 'have' to do this?"

"I'm just following your instructions," said Danny, with practiced innocence.

"We didn't tell you to isolate and chase people away from us," said Matt.

"You said to make sure that everyone you met likes you. You probably haven't noticed, but you aren't very likeable people, and I don't do mind control."

Angela frowned. "Then how are you keeping them away?"

"That's body control and selective amnesia. Completely different."

"We didn't say for you to take our stuff," said Jonah. "I want my car keys back."

"But car keys and knives are so dangerous. You could get hurt, and you said not to let that happen. That food was so unhealthy, too. It was mostly candy. Really, it's for the best that it's gone."

"And the furniture?" prompted Janet.

"Oh. That. Okay, that was just me. But it was funny, wasn't it?"

"No," said Janet, severely. "Ot isn't. Now, knock it off."

"Nope," said Danny, bobbing mid air with barely contained laughter.

Angela stamped her foot. "This isn't what we wanted."

"Well, no duh. Believe it or not, this wasn't on the top of the to-do list for me or my Master." Danny flipped upside down. "Even if you couldn't forgo the whole forced servitude thing, you could have asked if I could do what you wanted. But nooooooo, apparently you think all mysterious spirits are genies, or something, and you know what? Even genies don't like this stuff. Actually, you're lucky you didn't get a genie, cause they'd really mess with you. They have more experience. Doubly lucky for you," said Danny, taking a deep breath, "you have a way out. Release me, and I'll leave you all alone."

"No way," said Jonah. "Those orders are the only thing keeping you from trying to kill us! I know! I've watched those movies!"

"And you did this, anyway?" said Danny, flatly. He shook his head. "I have no intention of hurting you, let alone killing you. But if you don't belive me, we can make a deal. Those are covered in your book, aren't they?" Danny knew they were. He had managed to skim the book over the last couple of days.

"Yes," said Jonah, suspiciously.

"Great," said Danny. "Here's the deal. You release me, and I'll leave you in peace, so you can get back to your normal lives. Sound fair? If not, I can offer again in, oh, a week is a good time. Don't you think?"

They didn't have any choice, when it came down to it.

"We'll take your deal," said Janet. "Angela, what do we need to do?"

"We just have to say that we'll take the deal, and that we release him from his bonds," said Angela. "I'll take your deal," she said, directly, "and I release you from your bonds. Now you do it."

Matt and Janet repeated the words, and Danny felt a small amount of relief. Jonah, however, remained stubbornly silent.

"Come on, Jonah," said Angela. "I don't want to spend a whole year like this. I want to talk to my friends."

"And if I can't talk to anyone, I'll fail my classes!" said Matt. "I've got group projects."

"I'd rather fail than be killed!" protested Jonah. He picked the book up from where it sat between them, and started flipping through it. "There's got to be some kind of a solution in here."

"You know, society as a whole is pretty dangerous. I know a great place in the Canadian north, just south of the arctic circle, you know. No humans for miles and miles... I could bring you four there."

Jonah blanched. "Fine," he hissed. "I release you from your bonds. Happy?"

Danny beamed as his core was freed. "Very."

"Jonah, you didn't take the deal," whispered Angela.

Danny laughed, and pulled the book from Jonah's hands before disappearing. Then he dismissed his duplicates and flew up through the roof into the clear sky. Deal or not, he wasn't going to do anything to Jonah. There was more than enough mischief in him, however, to allow Jonah to continue thinking otherwise.

A blue portal opened in the air above him, and Danny smiled. Right on time. Clockwork must be feeling better. He flew through, blinking in the relative dimness of Long Now. Did he smell popcorn?

"I was wondering," said Clockwork, voice returned to its normal calm, "if you would like to join me in watching some of the highlights of your most recent adventure. I believe you missed some of the more amusing reactions."

Danny nodded, then held out the book. "What should I do with this?"

Clockwork held out his hand, and Danny gave it over. Danny blinked, and the book was replaced by a bowl of popcorn.

Clockwork gestured with his staff, indicating a couch set up in front of one of his viewing lenses. "Shall we?"


End file.
